Top 10 Mistakes Young Drivers Make

It's no secret that teen drivers are at greater risk for accidents than older adults — four times greater, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Chalk it up to a number of factors, among them inexperience dealing with emergency situations, distracted driving and the inclination to show off to friends.

Gary Tsifrin, founder of Oakland, Calif.-based DriversEd.com, shared his expertise on some of the most common mistakes young drivers make.

Being Distracted Behind the Wheel

Cellphones, CDs, food and text messages can pose serious distractions to drivers. In some cases, drivers will even text their backseat passengers, Tsifrin said.

Texting and other electronic usage cause up to 25 percent of all car crashes.

Texting and other electronic usage cause up to 25 percent of all car crashes, according to a report by the Governors Highway Safety Association, a nonprofit group working to improve traffic safety. Put another way, nearly 5,500 vehicular-related deaths can be attributed to distracted driving, such as texting, according to a 2009 study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

In a survey of 2,000 drivers ages 16 to 19, AAA and Seventeen magazine found that 86 percent of those surveyed drove distracted. However, they consider adjusting the radio and eating in the car as distractions.

Those two tried-and-true in-car institutions/distractions were what the teens engaged in most, with 73 percent guilty of adjusting the radio and 61 percent eating while driving. Still, 60 percent talk on a cellphone while driving, which many studies suggest is as distracting whether you’re using a handset or hands-free device.

Taking Too Many Risks

Tsifrin calls actions like ignoring traffic signals or school zone signs and changing lanes without checking blind spots "risky behavior." He said the difference between risky behavior and distracted driving is that risky behavior is deliberate while distracted driving is often the result of ignorance.

Ignoring traffic signs is one risky behavior teens may be susceptible to.

"Taking on too many risks is an active thing," Tsifrin said. "It's very conspicuous."

Teenage minds might actually be predisposed to risk-taking. In 2005 and 2006, researchers at Cornell University and Stanford University conducted risk-reward studies across a range of age groups. The study, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and published in the Journal of Neuroscience, measured activity in two areas of the brain — one that triggers impulsive actions and another that reins them in with rationality and caution. Researchers found that when confronted with risky choices, teen brains exhibit twice as much activity in the impulse area as adult brains, and the area that expresses restraint lags behind. It takes until the early 20s for the two areas to reach parity, the study said.

Speeding

Most drivers occasionally speed, but teens do so because they don't have a good sense of how a car's speed can affect their response time.

On average, teens drive faster than all other drivers as a whole.

"They will exceed speeds on residential roads that they interpret as empty because they haven't had close calls or someone coming out into the road," Tsifrin said.

A 2005 study by the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C., found that teens drive an average of 1.3 mph faster than all drivers as a whole. NHTSA reported in 2008 that 37 percent of fatal crashes with 15- to 20-year-old males at the wheel involved speeding.

Overcrowding the Car

Teens frequently overcrowd their cars, cramming five or six into a cabin meant to seat four or five, Tsifrin said. Worse yet, the extra passengers often result in teens driving more aggressively. The NIH study found that when accompanied by male passengers in the front seat, teens of both genders speed more and leave shorter following distances; a quarter of the drivers in the study broke the speed limit by 15 mph or more. Researchers confirmed the same trend for teenage girls driving with other girls, but teenage boys drove less aggressively when girls rode up front.

The distractions of carrying too many passengers can have serious consequences. Carrying two or more peer passengers more than triples the risk of a fatal crash with a teen at the wheel, according to a 2008 study that appeared in the Archives of Pediatric Medicine.

Driving Under the Influence

An annual study by the University of Michigan and NIDA reported that, in 2008, 43 percent of high school seniors surveyed said they drank alcohol in the past month. When teens drink and drive, they're even less likely to practice safe habits like wearing a seat belt: Of the 15- to 20-year-olds killed after drinking and driving in 2003, 74 percent were unrestrained, according to NHTSA.

"This is a huge problem," Tsifrin said. "Because they're too young to drink legally … they're also less likely to call their parents to come and get them. It's more likely for a 22-year-old to call their parents and tell them to pick them up."

Of course, alcohol isn't the only influence. Marijuana use is at an all-time high among eighth- to 12th-grade students, and one in five teens admits to have driven after smoking marijuana, according to a teen driving study released in 2012 by Liberty Mutual Insurance and SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions). A study in 1999 by NHTSA and Maastricht University in the Netherlands found that after low doses of marijuana, reaction times worsened by 0.9 seconds when moving at 59 mph in test conditions. That translates to an extra 78 feet of travel. With both alcohol and marijuana, reaction times were 1.6 seconds, or 139 feet, worse.

Following Too Closely

Maintaining a proper following distance is a critical step in preventing accidents.

At 60 mph, a typical car needs between 120 and 140 feet to reach a full stop. Most SUVs require an extra 5 to 10 feet on top of that. Consider that 60 mph translates to 88 feet per second and it's easy to see why maintaining a proper following distance is a critical step in preventing accidents. Unfortunately, many teens fail to do so: In the NIH study, teen drivers left nearly two-tenths of a second less following distance behind the car ahead than did general traffic. Even at 40 mph, that's 10 feet less stopping distance.

Tsifrin blames it on driving tactics that flaunt swagger over safety. "They want to drive aggressively as far as showing off," he said. "There's still the kind of high school attitude of 'Who am I in the pecking order?' "

Driving Unbuckled

In 2006, a survey by NHTSA reported that 76 percent of drivers age 16 to 24 said they wore their seat belts regularly, which NHTSA says is the lowest of any age group.

Approximately 24 percent of young drivers do not wear their seat belts regularly.

Tsifrin blames the lack of usage on many young drivers' sense of invincibility — "the hubris of youth," he called it — which also factors into teen speeding. Fortunately, many cars today have seat belt reminders that flash warning lights or chime until belts are secured. Call them annoying, but they help keep occupants buckled.

States with tougher seat belt laws are encouraging more teens to buckle up, according to a seat belt study conducted by The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and State Farm Insurance. The study polled 3,126 high school students across the nation and found that 82 percent regularly wear their seat belts while driving and 69 percent wear a seat belt as a passenger. In primary enforcement states (where law officials can stop and cite a driver solely for not wearing a seat belt), the study found that teen drivers are 12 percent more likely to buckle up and teen passengers are 15 percent more likely than those in secondary enforcement states (where a seat belt ticket is issued only after the motorist is pulled over for another offense).

Not Being Able to Handle Emergencies

Knowing how to avoid an accident comes with driving experience. Young drivers can only learn so much in the classroom, which leaves learning maneuvers like straightening out a skid or how to apply the brakes correctly to real-world experience. Speeding and distracted driving only make things worse, Tsifrin said, as they compound the lack of experience by putting drivers at higher risk of encountering an emergency situation in the first place.

Driving Drowsy

Drowsy driving affects an unlikely group — the so-called "good kids," Tsifrin said. That means straight-A students or those with a full plate of extracurricular activities.

"Overachievers have a lot of pressure here," he said. "If they're playing varsity sports and are also preparing for an AP English exam, and if they've been going from 7 a.m. and now it's midnight and they have to get home, they don't think, 'I'm too tired to drive.' "

NHTSA estimates that drowsy driving is a factor in 100,000 crashes, 40,000 injuries and 1,550 deaths annually. The National Sleep Foundation says it’s worse than that, as it says police data isn’t sufficient and many instances go unreported. Experts there put the numbers at 71,000 injuries and 5,500 deaths each year.

Choosing the Wrong Car and Not Maintaining It

Too often, a combination of tight budgets and high style leads teens to pass up important safety features for larger engines and flashy accessories.

"A teen or novice driver … will opt for a cool-looking sports car rather than a car that's really a safer choice," Tsifrin said. "Then, if they sink all their money into it they might be remiss in maintaining it."

That doesn't just mean forgetting to check tire pressure or picking a car with a sunroof instead of one with antilock brakes. It can also translate into buying oversized SUV wheels that look fancy but reduce highway stability or getting a performance stereo that drowns out potential hazards a driver might hear, such as an ambulance siren.